


meet me in the aftermath

by walkinginthewind (Leigh_flame)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Genderfluid Harry, I'm terrible at writing relationships can you tell, M/M, Smoking, Trans Louis, honestly even larry isn't really in here but the whole thing is centered around their friendship so?, if you don't like that you can skip those 2 paragraphs, it's a very minor mention, oh there's a period mention towards the beginning, ziam is a sort of thing in here but not enough that I want to disappoint people with the tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 13:43:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7107349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leigh_flame/pseuds/walkinginthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do information leaks, mildly angry (ex) best friends, and way too many dramatics have in common?</p><p>Louis doesn't know, but he has to deal with all of them.</p><p>---</p><p>Louis's just trying to live his life, but apparently life doesn't like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	meet me in the aftermath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tardiscrashing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardiscrashing/gifts).



> I kind of sort of combined two of the prompts given by the lovely tardiscrashing. One featured stealth transboy!Louis getting threatened with being outed, and the other involved genderfluid!Harry coming out during the break. Hopefully you like this!
> 
> I'd like to thank each and every one of my friends for dealing with me for the past couple of months. Sorry for panicking on you all so much. Also the whole incessantly talking about how much I needed to write while also procrastinating. That was probably annoying.
> 
> Also, thanks to Fleur, Lorcan, Simon, and all the rest of the people who all offered to beta for me and never got a chance to because I suck.
> 
> This is my first fanfiction I've ever posted on here, so yay for milestones! I obviously don't own any of the people whose names I'm using.

There was a weight on his chest, making it hard to breathe.

He dimly registered that the kettle is still working, that he’s going to have to pick it up off the stove and pour the water for his tea. He knew that in about 10 minutes, he’d have to answer texts, take his testosterone shot, get dressed, and do all the normal things he’s expected to do in a day.

Somehow it felt like time should have stopped, just for a moment, with the advent of this email. But he could hear the kettle whistling now, seemingly unaware that Louis’s life is caving in around his ears, right this second.

All because of an email, with a subject line that reads “Leaked Information: Meeting”.

\-----

The meeting was as dull as any other, or at least it should’ve been. But Louis couldn’t seem to relax, the tense expressions on everyone’s faces suggesting just how different this meeting is.

“We’ve prepared for this for a while,” someone said. “We know how to fix this, with no harm done. Nothing has to change.”

Louis barely heard it over the roar in his ears, the evidence the media site had sent them as proof of their claims taking precedence over anything else in the room. The printed-out file innocuously staring up at him that could bring his world crashing down.

“-we aren’t sure how the information was obtained, other than someone went to the press.”

Louis’s head snapped up at that.

“No one talked.” His voice sounded rough in his ears, coarse with fear and anger. He knew the people who were in on the secret- even the ones in on this meeting were known, to a degree. No one who knew would’ve said anything, he was sure of it.

“I know this must be hard for you-“ Louis did his best to cut him off with a well-placed glare, but the man just kept talking- “-But the fact remains that there is no way they could have this information without an insider.”

“It wasn’t on my end,” Louis said, already done with this meeting even though it’d been just over 7 minutes, according to the clock on the wall.

“…If you say so.”

\-----

He breathed out a sigh as he exited the room, rubbing a hand over his eyes. It’d only been a couple of hours according to his watch, but he was more than ready to go home and sleep for years.

He’d forgotten how draining all of this was- the fear, the anxiety over someone knowing something about him that they shouldn’t. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t been born this way, so he could avoid all of this.

He chuckled a little at himself as he clambered into the car that was waiting for him, ready to bring him back to his apartment while some guys in suits tried to “solve” the “problem” of his gender, and everything that came with it.

Being born differently wouldn’t solve his problems- it would just make him not himself.

\-----

Walking into the offices of his management for the second day in a row wasn’t exactly a picnic. Especially since he hadn’t even had time to finish his tea before he was whisked off.

That was his reasoning for the scowl on his face, at least, and he was sticking by it. It absolutely had nothing to do with the fact that he had woken up in a pool of blood.

At least it’d been a small pool of blood, but it had definitely not helped with the whole “someone is threatening to expose my full gender identity” thing. Definitely not helpful, Mother Nature.

To make things worse, he could definitely hear yelling coming from the boardrooms. He was _not_ in the mood for yelling.

He let out a semi-dramatic-sounding sigh as he trudged back to the conference room, dreading the inevitable fight. But as he grew closer-

He frowned and picked up the pace as he recognized the voice. Why was Harry here? And why was he so angry that he’d be yelling like that?

By the time he actually reached the room the yelling was coming from, the door had flung open, and a white-faced Harry stalked out. Louis went to reach out and grab his arm, wanting to know what had upset him so much, but caught himself at the last second. He and Harry hadn’t been on proper speaking terms for what felt like an eternity at this point.

He couldn’t even remember why, anymore, but he knew that reaching out now would be asking to get yelled at, and the way his day was going, he’d end up bursting into tears. Embarrassing on the best of days.

Instead, he shook himself off, and moved past to enter the room.

\-----

Louis flopped down at the table in the kitchen as soon as he could, ignoring Niall’s coos and Liam’s hand rubbing his back.

“That rough?” Liam said sympathetically, his hand automatically avoiding the area where Louis’s binder used to sit, before the surgery.

“You have no idea,” Louis said to the wood of the table.

“Yeah, well, it’s over now right?” Niall said, sitting up on the table, entirely too close to Louis’s face for any sort of comfort. Louis wrinkled his nose as he sat up.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, propping his head up on his hands instead. Niall nodded decisively, as if the conversation was closed, the danger over.

But Louis couldn’t stop thinking about how close it was this time, even as Liam drags him into Mario Kart. He lost spectacularly, and no one said anything.

 

It seemed odd to him, how quickly everything went back to normal. It shouldn’t be this easy, to move back into normal things, even if all that meant was going out with old friends and pretending like the cameras didn't exist.

Of course, he'd lived through quite a few more surreal things in his life.

Like coming third on X Factor, with a bunch of boys he barely knew. Or the day they sat him down and spent almost an hour grilling him on how much he wanted this life, and what the risks could be.

It wasn't as if he hadn't known before, Harry had pointed out at the time. Louis knew better than all of them put together how bad it could be, if secrets got out. He just thanked his lucky stars that he had made his parents and sisters and all his friends take down any and all images starring him pre or mid-transition, long before X Factor had been something he had in mind.

He supposed he got lucky, that way. Figuring out his gender so early, early enough that there wasn't really much evidence left that he had a little F on his (very well hidden) birth certificate.

That was still something he wished he could change, but 5 years of nonstop working, where even his breaks weren't breaks, didn't leave him much time to quietly fight the system. At least, not without people finding out.

Like this person had.

He still wanted to know how they'd gotten hold of that sort of evidence- images of him while in hospital, before and after his top surgery nearly 2 years before. He had been reasonably sure that there wasn't any photos taken, but apparently that wasn't the case.

He ignored the little voice in the back of his head that talked about memories and sounded an awful lot like a longhaired quirky bloke.

\-----

There were only so many pap walks one could do before it all blurred together into one long nightmare.

For Louis, that limit was at about 3 weeks of nearly every day. Harry would be disappointed, he thought, considering how he once went several months of this sort of thing.

Of course, it wasn't as if he would tell the guy that. He had his pride, after all, and his pride dictated that someone else be the one to break this silence.

He wasn't sure who that would be, but someone would.

Louis rubbed his hand over his eyes, trying to get rid of the remaining sunspots in his vision as the car trundled along. He was getting too old for this, or something.

He supposed it could be worse- he could be dealing with an even bigger press shitstorm than the party boy image. He was pretty sure they'd had a fake pregnancy planned out at some point, before someone had inevitably pointed out the flaws of claiming a trans boy had knocked someone up. Niall had gotten a kick out of that story, at least.

Here’s hoping all of it ended before someone got hurt.

 

 _This is NOT what he meant_.

Louis could feel the toothpaste dripping out of his mouth where his toothbrush hung frozen, staring at the headline of the article Liam had texted the link to, along with a caption that just read “ddi u knw abt ths??!?”

Some corner of his mind was wincing at the typos, but the majority of it was still screaming at the headline, unable to read any further.

In his defense, _BOYBANDER HARRY STYLES: NOT A BOY?_ is definitely a headline to short out his brain.

 

It took him 15 minutes of reading articles to figure out that his (ex?) best friend had come out as genderfluid, via a couple of tweets and an Instagram post. It took him another 30 minutes of googling to figure out what exactly that meant.

It took him 3 hours to work up the courage to text him (her? He wasn’t sure what the protocol for pronouns was, since Harry had neglected to mention that in his/her/their posts). The word “congratulations” had never been so terrifying.

 

He didn’t exactly expect to be best friends with him – them – again, but a complete lack of response wasn’t exactly what he expected either.

 

“You might’ve wanted to open with something. Ya know, like ‘sorry I’ve been giving ya the cold shoulder for almost 2 years, congrats on your coming out.’ Sweet and simple.”

Louis scowled at Niall.

“I have not been giving him the cold shoulder for 2 years, he’s the one who stopped speaking to me,” he snapped, a twinge of doubt pinging at the back of him mind. About the pronouns. No way was he doubting that it was Harry’s fault they hadn’t spoken. Never mind that he couldn’t remember exactly how that had happened.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Niall said as he walked away, probably heading in the direction of the bar, since no one had drinks yet.

Louis looked over at the others at the table, daring them to say anything, but Liam was the only one even glancing in his direction. He still glared at Liam, even though he knew that glaring was basically just asking for the other boy to say something. Sometimes he missed the days when Liam was intimidated by him.

“You know he’s right,” Liam said. Louis chose to ignore the inherent betrayal in this response, and go straight into denial.

“What was that Payno? You’re going to have to speak up a bit, it’s quite loud in here,” Louis said into the pretty much silent room. He wasn’t surprised when Liam rolled his eyes- he’d been spending way too much time around Zayn recently, what with being fresh off the hook and all.

“You’re an idiot,” the man in question said, giving him a look that on anyone else would be mild exasperation but on Zayn meant – well, “you’re an idiot”.

“Careful, Malik, if someone hears you talking like that they might think you actually like me,” Louis teased, grabbing at one of the beers Niall had brought over.

“Or that you’re on the verge of another Twitter fight,” Liam said.

“You kidding? They wouldn’t even believe that we were all in the same room, let alone speaking to each other,” Zayn said cheerfully.

Louis chuckled in time with the rest of them, resisting the urge to check his messages and pretending, like the rest of them, that no one was missing.

It took about 45 minutes of pretending (and about 5 minutes of Zayn being missing) before Louis needed a cigarette.

Unfortunately he wasn’t the only one who wanted the balcony.

“You can’t avoid him forever you know. Eventually it’s gonna turn ugly – well, more ugly.”

Louis nearly tripped over his own feet as he turned away from the door to the balcony. Nope, he was NOT going to listen in on Zayn’s private conversation, no matter how much he wanted to. And was pretty sure it was with Harry. And possibly about him.

“Yeah, I know, but he really did mean it. Just- you know how he is.”

What exactly was that supposed to mean?

“Yeah yeah, you don’t have to tell me about it. Tell him.”

He should really go back inside.

“And how do you know he doesn’t feel the same way?”

He’s leaving now.

“Well I think you’re both too stubborn for your own good.”

Any second.

“Alright, fine. See you later then.”

Okay now he really needed to go back inside, unless he wanted Zayn to know he was standing there that whole time.

He turned back inside, cigarette hanging forgotten between his fingers.

\-----

Four days and multiple read and watched interviews later, he found himself dialing a number he had promised himself months ago that he wouldn’t. Two rings in and he was definitely regretting this decision.

He honestly wasn’t sure what to do when he got the voicemail.

“Hi this is Harry, you should know what to do.”

The tired lilt to Harry’s voice took Louis off guard enough that there’s at least 2 seconds of silence at the beginning of his voicemail.

“Um, hey Haz,” he said, wincing at how high-pitched his voice sounds, “it’s me. Louis. Um, I just wanted to like – I dunno if you got my test, but I wanted to say, you know, congrats on the coming out, and also I just-“

He probably sounded like an idiot.

“-Never mind.”

He hung the phone up quickly, berating himself for even trying something like this. Why on earth would he have thought Harry would answer, anyways? They aren’t speaking right now.

He resisted the urge to throw the phone across the room. No point in destroying a perfectly good phone just because he and Harry weren’t talking. Never mind that this was the longest they’d ever gone without speaking or seeing each other. Never mind that apparently the person he used to call his best friend came out to the world before he even said a word to Louis.

If he pretended really hard, he could almost hear the phone ringing.

…Wait, his phone actually was ringing.

He didn’t bother to glance at the screen before he answered. If it was Harry, knowing beforehand wasn’t exactly going to help him figure out what to say.

“Hello?”

“…Louis?”

Louis sternly reminded himself that crying over the sound of someone’s voice was not something he needed to be doing. It wasn’t as if Harry had been at war or something for chrissake.

“Um, hey.”

This long of a pause felt unnatural, but he supposed it had been a while. Par for the course, then.

“You were going to apologize, weren’t you.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You had your “I need to say something that I really don’t like” voice on. Not exactly difficult to figure out.”

Louis scrunched his face up. This was the problem with best friends- they knew you too well.

“I’m sorry too, for what it’s worth.”

“Alright.”

“Okay.”

“Apology accepted.”

“Good. Does this mean I can stop avoiding Niall?”

A slightly hysterical laugh slipped out of Louis’s mouth.

“Have you really been avoiding him?” he asked, amused beyond what he really should be, given the situation.

“I mean, not really? But like… yeah, kind of. And don’t even start.”

Louis shook his head, still giggling. “You’re an idiot, Haz.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Are you really gonna start with that now?”

By the way Harry giggled at that, he figured they were okay.

\-----

He’d have been a fool to think one phone conversation could change everything back to the way it was before.

As it was, now he was stuck in Niall’s apartment with a dead phone and a Harry Styles while Niall went off in search of their two missing friends. He knew that “weekly ex-band meetings” were a bad idea from the start.

Why did people think twiddling thumbs was a good way to pass the time? It seemed rather boring, really.

He shifted in his seat, sitting sideways in it so he could better see Harry’s gangly legs at the corner of his eyes. A quick glance at Harry revealed that not only was he not as bored, he’d managed to conserve much more battery life than Louis had. Louis hoped he was playing something battery draining.

“You should’ve brought your charger.”

Louis twisted around to properly glare at Harry, who hadn’t even looked up.

“And you’re not borrowing my phone either,” he said, one corner of his mouth curving up into a smirk.

“I hate you,” Louis announced as he turned back around, then thought of something and turned back.

“What pronouns?” he asked. Harry paused in his tapping for moment, before locking his phone and setting it on the counter in front of him.

“What do you mean?” he said carefully, folding his hands together like Louis had just asked a particularly difficult interview question.

“I mean, you’re genderfluid, yeah? I’ve sort of just kept on with the he/him, but do you have a preference today? Or like, overall, or anything?”

Harry stared, long enough that Louis started to shift, uncomfortable with the scrutiny, before he smiled cautiously.

“Did you do _research_?” he asked incredulously, the smile getting bigger as Louis flushed.

“I mean, it’s only common courtesy to figure out what exactly your mate just came out as,” he said, way more flustered than he really wanted to be. Harry’s dimple popping out wasn’t a very good distraction.

“Yeah, alright. He/him’s good for now, I guess. Still working on that part.”

Louis nodded, beginning to fidget under the tension he could feel still circulating the room. Harry was no help, just looking at him like he’d never seen him before.

“You really did do research, didn’t you,” he said. Louis rolled his eyes.

“Of course I did research, Haz, you’re my best friend even when you _do_ do thing like come out on social media without any warning,” he snapped.

“But I did warn people.”

“You didn’t warn me.”

That seemed to shut him up. Louis thought that should be more satisfying than it actually was.

 

When the other three finally showed up, they came into a silent apartment. Harry was on his phone, and Louis was on the balcony with his third cigarette.

After a bit of silent conferring, Zayn continued towards the kitchen with the food, while Liam and Niall split up.

Niall sat down next to Louis and sighed. Louis pretended to be absorbed in his cigarette, knowing that if there was a problem that Niall would eventually start talking.

Niall sighed again, more pointedly this time. Louis fought the urge to sigh back, not wanting to encourage whatever it was he was trying to do.

Finally, Niall broke.

“Did you actually talk to him, or did you both just mutually decide that the rest of us were getting annoying?”

Louis internally rolled his eyes as he finished off the last of his cigarette. He should’ve known.

“Yes we actually talked. I’m slightly insulted that you would think we hadn’t,” he shot back. Niall rolled his eyes.

“ _We_ weren’t sure, since neither of you has so much as said a word to each other around the rest of us since you apparently made up.”

“Just because we haven’t said a word in front of you doesn’t mean we’re not talking.”

“Can’t blame a man for being suspicious.”

“But I can blame him for being annoying.”

“We just don’t like seeing you two at odds like this. ‘s unnatural.”

“Don’t you start on that soul mate drivel again.”

“You know I’m right.”

“We’re friends, that’s it.”

Niall sighed, getting up. “Yeah, I know.”

\-----

Louis swipes Harry’s phone at some point during the evening. For his own good, of course – he knows Harry’s been checking Twitter again, and he’s much too sensitive for that.

Totally not because all his favorite games got downloaded onto Harry’s phone at some point, and he can’t be bothered to buy them again on his.

\-----

It eventually gets a little easier, with practice. Talking to Harry has always come naturally.

Not much seemed to change, on the surface – Harry was still Harry, Louis was still Louis, they still couldn’t be seen out and about together. Harry was still hiding out at someone’s house who wasn’t Louis.

They were speaking now, though. They spent time with each other, when they could. Louis complained about the pap walks and Harry needled him. Harry complained about the press and Louis needled Harry right back.

Harry decided on simple they/them pronouns – “easier for everyone, and that way people don’t get confused reading different articles on different days,” they said. Louis privately thinks that Harry is too nice to other people.

It gets easier.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, there was more to the story than this. Actually there still is, it's just not finished yet. I figured some was better than none, and besides, this basically stands on its own.
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)


End file.
